Heya Mike -
We received about a 30% increase in gross revenue the first year when we moved to a prominent downtown location in 1998.
Mostly due to increased rug cleaning.
I'll never forget the first day. We hung a homemade sign (computer generated) in the window about "Rug Cleaning" on our door on the Sunday before our Grand Opening. At 8:35 AM Monday morning (we opened at 8:30 AM), we had our first walk-in customer who was beside herself that she could actually bring her rugs in for cleaning.
About 10 minutes later another walk-in showed up with a few rugs, equally as thrilled that the service was now available.
If you don't do rug cleaning, restoration, or don't have a reason for walk-ins, I can think of many other ways to become "buzzworthy" other than securing an expensive location.
I can also safely report this. 2 years ago we sold the downtown location and built a big pole barn on my property to house our HQ. We decided not to aggressively pursue rug cleaning any longer. As predicted our rug cleaning took a hit but the rest of our operations rose because we spent a bit more on marketing than we had in the past. The difference in increased marketing was nowhere near the building payment, so we made out better at the new barn.
This year I totally rewrote our business plan and focus for the next 5 years and now we need a prominent location again, but not for rugs - but for restoration, amongst other things.
Scott